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An Analysis of Policy-Based Congressional Responses to the U.S. Supreme Court's Constitutional Decisions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2024

Bethany Blackstone
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Abstract

While Congress can attempt to overrule constitutional decisions of the Supreme Court by initiating the constitutional amendment process, an amendment is rarely a practicable option. Instead, Congress regularly tries to modify the impact of constitutional decisions with ordinary legislation. I analyze policy-based responses to the Supreme Court's constitutional decisions that were initiated in Congress between 1995 and 2010. For each responsive proposal, I consider the relationship between the proposed legislation and the Court's legal holding and the relationship between the proposal and the public policy associated with the Court's decision. I find that Congress enjoys considerable success in reversing the policy impacts of the Court's decisions but is limited in its ability to overcome the Court's legal rules.

Type
Articles
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 47 , Issue 1 , March 2013 , pp. 199 - 228
Copyright
© 2013 Law and Society Association.

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Footnotes

The data employed in this article are available at http://politicalscience.unt.edu/~blackstone/Home/LSR2013.html.

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